South Xtra: Rookie coach leads Baldwin to playoffs
-
Gavin Prosser has led the Baldwin girls basketball team to a playoff berth in his first season as a head coach. -
Senior point guard Taylor Wentzel leads Baldwin in scoring, averag-ing about 13 points per game.
Share with others:
When he was playing point guard at Point Park University, Gavin Prosser was running the top scoring offense in the nation.
Now that he is running the girls basketball team at Baldwin High School, Prosser is bringing the same basic concepts from his playing days at Point Park to his first head coaching stint at his other alma mater.
The numbers are there to prove it even though they may not be as prolific as the team that averaged a national best 89.8 and 92.9 points per game in his junior and senior seasons at Point Park, respectively.
Through 20 games Baldwin is averaging 49.3 points per game. They have reached 70 points twice this season and reached 60 or more five times.
The points have translated into a 14-6 overall record and an 8-3 mark in Section 4-AAAA. Baldwin is tied with Bethel Park for second place and the two will break that deadlock tonight when they meet in their section finales.
Mt. Lebanon (18-2, 11-0) has clinched the section title and Baldwin and Bethel have also clinched WPIAL playoff berths. Peters Township (10-10, 5-6) and Upper St. Clair (10-10, 5-6) are battling for fourth place and the section's final playoff spot.
For Prosser, it is all about giving his players the chance to make plays.
"Our offense at Point Park was designed to get the ball in the right positions for people to make plays," Prosser said. "And that is something that we are trying at Baldwin now, just get the ball into the areas of the court we feel that our playmakers can make plays."
This Baldwin team is near last year's pace, when the team averaged 52.2 points per game. Of course that was with Belma Nurkic on the team, one of the top players in program history. She has since graduated and is now playing at Duquesne University. Even with the loss of Nurkic, Prosser still inherited a talented team.
This is Prosser's first head coaching stint and first time in girls' basketball. After graduating from Baldwin as the second-leading scorer in school history, he played at Point Park from 2004-07. He then served as assistant coach on the Point Park men's basketball staff for the past two years before taking the job at Baldwin.
"I am pretty pleased with the way things are going," Prosser said. "Coaching girls -- it is different, that is for sure. It has been a challenge, but I am having fun. The girls are enjoying it and working hard. You can't ask for much more than that."
Prosser was hired at a school board meeting on Aug. 10.
"At first I didn't know a whole lot about the team," Prosser recalled. "I knew they had three seniors coming back but mostly it was an inexperienced team."
The Highlanders starting five consists of senior point guard Taylor Wentzel, sophomore shooting guard Amanda Johnston, senior three-guard Carly Corcoran, sophomore forward Taylor Letender and senior center Anna Lauterbach.
Wentzel leads the team in scoring averaging around 13 points per game. Lauterbach has been one of the top players on the team in terms of scoring and rebounding. In a 54-52 win over Upper St. Clair recently, Lauterbach had 17 points and 14 rebounds.
"She is a girl who can really score some points for us," Prosser said.
Letender has worked her way into the starting lineup despite barely even playing junior varsity last season as a freshman.
"She is somebody who is pretty experienced, but I think she has tremendous athletic ability and she can really help us over the years," Prosser said.
Two of Baldwin's losses came in lopsided fashion to Mt. Lebanon, 62-28 and 55-25. The Highlanders managed to hang with the defending PIAA Class AAAA champions for the first half before things got away from them in the second half.
"Sometimes we lose a little bit of confidence," Prosser said. "And that kind of hurts us, that is something that we have been trying to work on the last couple of days."
First Published February 9, 2012 12:00 am
